Common Topics

Recent Articles

Two days after dissident hackers trashed the FBI's Web site there's still no sign of life at spook central. A group calling itself Global Hell (gH) broke into www.fbi.gov on Wednesday in retaliation for nine of its members being arrested by the FBI for other government-related hacking offences. Reports also suggest that those gH members still at liberty have wreaked havoc elsewhere although exactly how many sites have been brought to their knees has yet to be confirmed. In a show of defiance one message read: "gH IS HERE TO STAY. NO ONE WILL STOP US." Ironically, in March the FBI published its fourth annual Computer Crime and Security Survey warning organisations to be on their guard against an increase in hacking activity. Shame it didn't take its own advice. News of the FBI's embarrassing security flaw coincided with a warning from Network Associates of a vicious email attachment currently doing the rounds that lets people hack into you system remotely. BackDoor-G -- which operates much like a Trojan Horse -- gains entry to a PC running Windows 95/98 masked by a spam email. Once activated, PCs are left wide open for attack by hackers. A statement from Network Associates reads: "Network Associates announced today that it has discovered a potentially dangerous new "trojan horse" program called BackDoor-G that could allow hackers to remotely access and control infected PCs over the Internet. "BackDoor-G, which has been confirmed in the wild, is the latest in a string of new hybrid security threats that blur the line between viruses, security exploits and malicious code attacks. "While not technically a virus...BackDoor-G has been given a risk assessment rating of "High" by [our] Anti Virus Emergency Response Team (AVERT)." ®